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International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol 37, No. 4

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International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol 37, No. 4 The Legacy of Theodor Grentrup Paul B. Steffen heodor Grentrup of the Society of the Divine Word in Nepi-Sutri, where he used the opportunity to acquire a solid T(SVD) planted seeds of twentieth-century Catholic mis- knowledge of the Italian language. He returned to St. Gabriel’s sionary research and cultivated them with so much passion and to teach philosophy but was also assigned as a substitute profes- intellectual engagement that we continue to enjoy the fruits of sor of canon law. Canon law would become his specialty and the his work. His contributions to missionary research were invalu- centerpiece of his scholarly work, with a particular focus on mis- able, in particular as in his lectures and publications he argued sion law and sociology.4 In 1909 he gave up teaching philosophy strongly for the rights of missions, peoples, and minorities. No and until 1920 concentrated on teaching canon law. other Catholic scholar of his time—primarily the two decades Grentrup’s earliest academic article, published in 1913, before the Second World War—was so intensely concerned for appeared in the first Catholic missiological journal, Zeitschrift the cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. für Missionswissenschaft (Journal of missiology), which Joseph On October 9, 1893, Theodor Grentrup entered the mother- Schmidlin began in 1911. His article focused on the definition of house of the Divine Word Missionaries in Steyl, a small village mission, which Grentrup understood theologically as systematic near Venlo, in the Netherlands. The record he filled in that day activity carried out with the aim of spreading the church of notes, “I was born on May 25, 1878, in Ahlen, in the parish of Christ among pagans and those who do not believe in Christ. Neuahlen in the diocese of Münster. I went to a primary school Citing canon law, he asserted, “In terms of ecclesiastical law, in Ahlen, where I received the sacrament of Holy Communion mission countries are those where the ecclesial hierarchy has on April 4, 1891, administered by Fr. Grabe, the assistant parish not yet been established.”5 This article “prompted a discus- priest.” His parents came from families of Westphalian weavers. sion that lasted for years,” remarked the mission historian Grentrup was the oldest of seven children. After attending pri- Johannes Kraus. Grentrup’s contribution to that debate, Kraus mary school until age twelve, he transferred to the Latin school notes, was not only fifteen further essays in the same journal in his hometown, where for the next three and a half years his but also a large number of essays, some written in response to studies included Latin, French, and Greek.1 specific current political circumstances, in publications ranging from the Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht and Theologie und Early Years in the SVD Glaube to the Ostdeutschen Pastoralblatt and Christ Unterwegs, not to mention his work for the Berlin diocesan magazine and Academic life in the SVD motherhouse in Steyl was full of excit- his contributions to the journal for homiletics Haec loquere et ing challenges for the young Grentrup, who demonstrated both exhortare. He would also make significant contributions to the intellectual passion and a natural ability to learn. In 1896 he encyclopedia of the Görres Society, the Lexikon für Theologie und transferred to St. Gabriel’s mission house in Maria Enzersdorf, Kirche (both to its earlier edition of 1930 and its later edition, near Vienna, Austria, where he studied philosophy and natural which began to appear in 1957), the American Encyclopedia (article sciences for three semesters under the prefect of students, Wilhelm entitled “Negro Education”), the British Encyclopedia (“Racial Gier, who later became superior general of the SVD and played Problems”), and the Catholic Encyclopedia for Japan, which was a significant role for Grentrup for many years to come.2 When, edited by the Jesuits.6 at age twenty, Grentrup began his novitiate (spiritual formation After dealing with the issue of marriage between white and year) as a Divine Word Missionary, Gier was novice master. Gier colored people in the colonies in a number of articles,7 Grentrup recorded, “The novice Grentrup showed outstanding intellectual in 1914 produced his first book, on the same subject. In Die Ras- gifts and was a model of unpretentiousness and modesty.”3 senmischehen in den deutschen Kolonien (Racially mixed marriages Grentrup professed his final vows on October 20, 1901, and was in the German colonies), he pleaded with pedagogical wisdom ordained an SVD missionary priest in February 1902. for support for such couples. From 1916 to 1918 he taught four semesters of mission law, which he developed using the critical Teacher and Scholar issues of his first publications. Paul Michalke, a fellow member of the SVD, commented on the development of Grentrup’s Grentrup’s intellectual gifts caught the eye of his superiors, and career: “He specialized in mission law. From there he ventured to immediately after his ordination he became a faculty member international law and colonial law. After the end of World War I, at St. Gabriel’s, beginning his teaching career as a lecturer in his scholarly works focused on the rights of minorities and their philosophy. Two years later he was given the chance to study in spiritual and cultural needs.”8 Rome at the Angelicum and at Gregorian University; in only two In 1920 the Fifth General Chapter of the SVD elected Wilhelm semesters he earned his doctorate in canon law at the Angelicum. Gier as superior general and Theodor Grentrup as one of the four In 1905–6 he was on loan as a lecturer to the diocesan seminary general councilors. At age forty-two Grentrup was the youngest member of the general leadership team of his mission society. Paul B. Steffen, S.V.D., worked in Papua New Guinea, Gier introduced a new arrangement that made each councilor beginning in 1984. In 1992 he received a doctorate in responsible for certain missions and areas; Grentrup was assigned missiology at the Gregorian University in Rome and the position of secretary for studies and charged with care for from 1993 taught missiological courses in Papua New the society’s missions in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Guinea, Germany, and the Philippines. He has been a Japan. Apparently unsatisfied with his work and experiences on lecturer on the missiological faculty of the Pontifical the General Council, in 1924 he resigned and moved to Berlin in Urbaniana University in Rome since 2002. order to pursue his academic research.9 —[email protected] In 1925 Grentrup’s paper on mission law “Jus Missionarium” 228 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 37, No. 4 was printed in Steyl. After a preliminary discussion of concepts German communities in Czechoslovakia, Carpathian Ruthenia and sources and a shorter first part about rights and duties (today part of Slovakia and Ukraine), Poland, the Baltic states, and related to the proclamation of the faith, Grentrup dealt in great South Tyrol contributed to his 1928 work Die kirchliche Rechtslage detail with the legal position of missions in relation to civil and der deutschen Minderheiten katholischer Konfession in Europa (The international law in specific countries.10 When Gier presented ecclesiastical law of the German Catholic Christian minorities in this work to Pope Pius XI in an audience on April 6, 1925, the Europe). His educational journey of 1927 to the Banat Swabians pope sent his greetings to Grentrup and commented, “It is very in Romania and the ethnic Germans in Serbia’s Vojvodina was good that this has become a topic of a scientific presentation.”11 financed by the foreign ministry in Berlin. Before 1939 he jour- Joseph Schmidlin called this study “a compilation, exemplary neyed with similar purpose to Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.18 and exhaustive in its own right, marking essential progress in Unfortunately, the records of his foreign travels fell victim to the this new field and dealing courageously with the problems posed devastation in Berlin in 1945, during which the convent of the therein.”12 Only the first volume of this extensive three-volume Grey Sisters, where Grentrup lived, was destroyed. project appeared; according to one account the second volume In his lectures at the Hochschule für Politik (Academy for was lost after being left on a Berlin subway politics) in Berlin, Grentrup treated in par- train, and the changing political context ticular the relationship between the church dampened Grentrup’s desire to return to and education. In 1929 he received a second the project.13 In 1928 a book by Grentrup teaching assignment: Catholic missiology on mission law was published in German at the Oriental Seminar at the University under the title Die Missionsfreiheit nach of Berlin. He lost the first teaching position den Bestimmungen des geltenden Völkerrecht in 1933, immediately after the takeover (Freedom of missions according to the pro- by the National Socialists; he retained his visions of the applicable law of nations).14 second lecturing post until 1938. Having One reviewer noted that although this work been removed from his position at the in part repeated material already published University of Berlin, Grentrup was free in Jus Missionarium, it was particularly valu- to carry out field research in China. In able for all practitioners of mission for its 1927 he had given a lecture on the recent explanation of the contemporary context challenges to mission work in China.
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